Behind S10 Video Game Feast: Suning Has Not Lost, Tencent Has Always Won

October 31, 2020 hero League global finals (S10) came to an end. Finally, the DWG team from South Korea Lck division defeated the SN team from China LPL division by 3:1 and successfully won the championship cup.

For the Chinese audience, this competition has a special significance. It is not only the 10th season of the global finals of the League of heroes, but also the return of the world's top E-sports event to China after three years.

In 2017, Beijing bird's nest, the League of heroes global finals for the first time landed in China, but unfortunately, the two teams from China were defeated by the Korean team in the final four, making the final competition for the first and second runner up become the Korean civil war.

S7, which has become the pain in the hearts of countless hero league players. However, it may also be stimulated by this. In the following S8 and S9, the Chinese team won two consecutive championships, especially the news that Ig team won the championship in the S8 season, which swept the major social platforms and helped the e-sports successfully break through.

With the honor of "double champion", the finals return to China. Both the Chinese team and the Chinese players are eager to win the championship again. On the one hand, they can make up for the regret of 2017 at the home court of China, and at the same time, establish the "LPL King Dynasty" in China's competition area.

Before the finals, the SN team, which made it to the global finals for the first time, went all the way with a "dark horse" attitude, and finally entered the final. It also became the first team in China's LPL division to step on the stage of the finals at home. Although the final result is a failure, but for the SN team, this has been a dream trip, for China's e-sports, it is also a verification of industrial value.

According to the Research Report of China's e-sports industry, the total output value of the e-sports industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2019. According to statistics, in 2020, China's E-sports users are expected to exceed 400 million, among which young users are the mainstream, which also means that E-sports has become an important carrier to connect young people. Coupled with the favorable environmental factors such as national policies and local government support, the development speed of China's e-sports industry is still accelerating.

Therefore, even if they are defeated in the S10, the Chinese team's achievements in two championships and one Asia in the past three years are still enough to surpass the world. In the face of this booming industry, every person or organization deeply involved in it is actually a winner.

October 4, 2020, Shanghai, the next day of the group match of 2020 S10 world finals. Visual China

Suning has tasted "sweet"

In 2016, Suning Group officially entered the e-sports industry and established Suning E-sports Club (SN team). Lin Qing, assistant to the general manager of Suning E-sports club, told the 21st century economic report that Suning was involved in E-sports at that time. In that year, Suning acquired the live broadcast platform Longzhu TV, and there was an E-sports department under Longzhu that was mainly engaged in the operation of E-sports clubs, which promoted the development of Suning E-sports.

However, a few years ago, E-sports was still a relatively small industry. When Lin Qing introduced the e-sports club to the leaders of Suning group, he would compare NBA and football, and explain to them that E-sports is not a game, but a competitive and professional thing similar to sports.

Before the establishment of the e-sports club, Suning had a deep understanding of the sports industry, although it may not have been exposed to E-sports. In fact, the establishment of Suning E-sports club has become the fourth professional club under Suning group. The other three clubs are Jiangsu Suning football club, Italian Inter Milan club and Jiangsu Suning women's football club.

At the beginning, the SN team will also hear some objections within the company, but as the team continues to make achievements, these opposition voices also begin to disappear. In April 2017, the SN team, which was founded only five months ago, won the LDL spring championship and successfully promoted to the LPL League. Two months later, the SN team, which was established less than a year ago, became the last eight of the LPL summer season.

With the results, the SN team to get more and more resources support. At the beginning of 2019, Suning E-sports club new base is officially put into use in Shanghai Jing'an District Honghui horizon box Industrial Park. According to the data, the base is designed to be divided into three layers, with a total area of more than 1600 square meters, and can accommodate an operation team of more than 20 people and a competition training team of 60 people.

At this time, Suning E-sports club has become one of the few professional training bases in the industry. At the same time, the club also began to expand more E-sports projects, furnace stone legend, through the fire line, peace elite branch has been established.

Lin Qing told reporters that in 2018, Suning E-sports club made a three-year plan, which is expected to be able to stand on the world stage to show the club's style in 2021. This year, the SN team broke into the world championship, in fact, it has achieved its goal one year ahead of schedule, and finally stood on the stage of the finals, which is more than fulfilled the goal.

Sn team can go to today, and Suning group's support is inseparable. In Lin Qing's opinion, Suning group has brought three aspects of help to the development of Suning E-sports Club: the first is in the aspect of commercialization. "When a lot of E-sports clubs were just established, they didn't make any achievements. One of the big problems they had to face was to find sponsors. From the beginning, Suning E-sports club can obtain some commercial income through Suning group's resources and cooperation.

Secondly, in terms of brand communication, many resources of Suning group, such as star resources, online and offline stores, have provided support for the promotion of Suning E-sports club, which also makes many people who don't know about E-sports gradually begin to understand e-sports, and also makes Suning E-sports Club gain more fans.

Finally, brand endorsement. Suning is a relatively influential brand in China, which makes the club more smooth in recruiting players and dealing with their parents. "Many parents think Suning is a big company, so they can trust us to cultivate their children.".

After nearly three years of cultivation, Suning E-sports club's strength broke out in the S10 arena, and E-sports also began to feed back Suning's retail business. It is reported that as the designated e-commerce platform in China for the 2020 hero League global finals, Suning e-buy has successively launched targeted welfare activities on Suning live broadcast, fish fighting, tiger teeth and other live broadcasting platforms, including super members of E-sports special edition, game tickets of hero League, and game props surrounding.

According to Suning e-buy, due to the excellent performance of Sn team in S10, the number of members handling Suning E-sports special edition has increased sharply. In order to support Sn team, many fans spontaneously put forward the slogan of "double 11 on Suning" on major social platforms.

S10 coincides with the eve of double 11, which is also the annual marketing war of major e-commerce platforms. In the middle of October, in the top four promotion arena, Sn team met with JDG team of Jingdong, and staged a "lion dog war". Finally, Sn team defeated JDG team and became the top four team. Because of the special identity of Suning and Jingdong, the topic extended from E-sports to retail sales, and got on the microblog hot search.

The data shows that from September 20 to October 20, the overall sales scale of E-sports products (such as keyboard and mouse, E-sports chair and other peripherals, game computers, etc.) on Suning e-buy platform increased by 142% month on month; from October 16 to 18, on the weekend (from Friday to Sunday) after winning the key competition (quarter finals) of Sn team, Suning E-mart's sales of E-sports attribute goods increased by 78% month on month, and the sales of E-sports products of Suning e-buy increased by 78% from October 16 to 18 The number of visitors increased by 120%.

It can also be seen from the wechat index that the index of "Suning" keyword began to rise from the end of October, which is also the time for it to enter the finals. Subsequently, on October 31, the day of the finals and the following two days, "Suning" index rose linearly, even exceeding the heat of Suning 818 Shopping Festival.

In terms of recent e-commerce, Suning's most competitive link has become an outstanding performance for its e-commerce platform. Lin Qing also told reporters that what the e-sports club can give back to the group is mainly the feedback of traffic and IP. Because Suning's retail system has always been pursuing youth, and the audience group of E-sports is mainly young people, so Suning E-sports club also hopes to put young users into Suning's whole retail system through its own efforts.

Tencent is the winner behind the scenes

Suning team relies on its outstanding record to help Suning group become a winner of S10. Tencent is undoubtedly the winner behind the whole S10, no matter who wins or loses.

From the layout of E-sports 10 years ago to the official release of the "Tencent E-sports" brand four years ago, Tencent's exploration of E-sports is actually a history of the development of China's e-sports industry. At present, the most influential domestic E-sports events LPL and KPL are from Tencent.

Therefore, the successful holding of S10 is a victory for Tencent's game and E-sports business. In addition, behind S10, Tencent's b-end business has actually won.

This year, affected by the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, only 6312 free spectators were opened at the final of S10, and the qualification should be selected by lottery. In the end, more than 3.2 million users registered with lottery numbers, and the winning rate was about two thousandths. In addition to more than 6000 lucky spectators, other spectators could only watch the game online.

At the end of last year, station B spent 800 million yuan to win the exclusive live broadcasting rights of China in the next three years of the global finals of the League of heroes. However, in August this year, E-sports of Betta, tiger tooth and Penguin announced that they had obtained the broadcasting rights of S10. Some analysts say that station B distributes after getting the exclusive copyright, mainly to share the risk and reduce the cost. But in fact, the more subtle relationship behind this is Tencent.

In early August, douyu and Huya respectively received the merger offer from Tencent. In early October, douyu and Huya jointly announced that Huya would acquire douyu by exchanging shares for shares, and douyu would become a subsidiary of Huya and delisted from NASDAQ.

After the transaction, Dong Rongjie, the current CEO of Huya and Chen Shaojie, the current CEO of douyu, will become the co CEOs of the merged company, while Tencent will become the actual controller of the new company, with 67.5% voting rights.

It is worth noting that in this transaction scheme, douyu and Tencent also signed an agreement, Tencent will transfer the live game business of penguin to Betta at a total price of 500 million US dollars, and then integrate Penguin E-sports with the merged tiger teeth and fighting fish.

Therefore, it seems that station B distributed the copyright of S10 to three platforms in August. Now, it is actually distributed to Tencent, and Tencent has a very close relationship with station B. as of the end of February this year, Tencent held 13.3% of the equity of station B, the second largest shareholder of station B, but it only has 4% voting rights.

Therefore, the event broadcasting of S10 is basically monopolized by several major platforms controlled by Tencent and station B. what provides technical support is naturally Tencent cloud, which Tencent is currently focusing on.

It is reported that Tencent carries 90% of the traffic of the whole cloud. Li Yutao, general manager of Tencent cloud video business, told the 21st century economic report that this kind of large-scale competition live broadcast requires very high requirements for the whole link. From the signal coming out of the stadium to the transcoding of the first layer of broadcasting, to the public network, then to the cloud, and finally to the customer's business system, every link is very critical. As long as there is a problem in one link, even if there is a little network jitter It will cause 10 million users to be stuck.

For several major live broadcasting platforms, Li Yutao said that these platforms all have their own very complex business logic, so their demand for Tencent cloud is also different. For example, P2P technology, Betta requires Tencent cloud's P2P to be compatible with multiple suppliers and its self-developed P2P technology, so when serving Betta, it needs to do a lot of compatible adaptation work.

Station B is the exclusive use of Tencent cloud, so Tencent cloud needs to do less customization work, but it also needs to adapt to the player of station B, and then provide data transmission according to the requirements of its player.

Through the support of live broadcast of s game in recent years, Li Yutao also summed up four development trends of live broadcasting technology, that is, greater concurrency, clearer viewing, lower delay and stronger interaction. Among them, the first three are the basic requirements of live broadcasting, and interaction has gradually become the standard configuration of live broadcasting.

For example, Tencent cloud integrated the technical capabilities of live recording and cloud on demand to provide the "real-time playback" function for the betta platform. Users can directly drag back to watch the live broadcast while watching the live game. And the betta also relies on AI technology to realize the timing function of wonderful moments. Players can accurately identify the time points of killing and group fighting on the progress bar, and quickly find the position of each wonderful moment in the game.

In addition, station B realized the event video recording storage and replay with the help of Tencent cloud in this S10 live broadcast. For example, during the live broadcast of the event, station B can directly record the live content, generate the video immediately after the end of the event, and directly store the video in the cloud for subsequent use; at the same time, after the event is over, station B can add multiple event video files to the carousel list, convert the video files into live streaming, and directly push them to the live broadcast room of the event, so as to realize the replay of the event Yes.

For Tencent's cloud video business, the focus in the past was mainly on the transmission and distribution of audio and video. Now and in the future, its focus will be on more technology empowerment and extensive cooperation on the upstream content production and downstream consumer end. S10 is undoubtedly the best verification of its technical strength.

In August this year, Hou Miao, vice president of Tencent games and general manager of Tencent's e-sports, said that this year will be the golden five-year sprint year of e-sports, "city", "technology", "commerce" and "Sports" are the key words for the development of E-sports this year.

In addition to technology, Shanghai, as the host city of S10, has been committed to promoting the creation of the city name card of "global E-sports city". This time, Shanghai has also opened the first E-sports cultural activity in the history of e-sports, namely, city Canyon life month.

In terms of business, the number of sponsors of s event has increased from 8 in S9 to 15 now, involving fast sales, automobile, finance and many other fields. Lin Qing is also deeply touched by this. He said that in the past, Nike and Mercedes Benz did not dare to think of sponsorship, but now, these have become sponsors of e-sports, and many leading enterprises in traditional industries have also come to sponsor E-sports. The sponsor environment of the e-sports industry has undergone a great change.

However, in the creation of the "Sports" label, compared with those sports events with a long history, E-sports is still too young, especially in order to achieve the social awareness of sports events, the road is particularly long. But fortunately, the e-sports industry has embarked on a journey. In addition, it is worth looking forward to the 2021 hero League global finals will continue to be held in China.